


screwed

by firstaudrina



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:00:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21666313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Maia makes fun of Jace for not having a hobby, and he has an existential crisis about it.
Relationships: Maia Roberts/Jace Wayland
Comments: 17
Kudos: 68





	screwed

**Author's Note:**

> This diverges from canon after 2x13.

Jace is still catching his breath, but Maia’s already up and almost out of bed. She perches on the edge for just a moment, her back to him and arms stretched high above her head, lazy and loose at the wrists. Her back maps the motion, sharp shoulder blades dipping in towards the stepping stones of her spine. Jace reaches out, but his fingers barely brush the small of her back as she rises. She heads for the bathroom.

“Hey,” Jace protests, half-heartedly tugging the sheets over himself. He leaves the line of one bare hip exposed. There’s sweat on his collarbones, come on his stomach, skin sticky. But you don’t see him rushing off. “Where’s the fire?”

Maia reemerges, wry amusement in the arch of her eyebrow. “I just worked a full shift, I have a paper to proof, and I’d like to get _some_ sleep before I do it all again tomorrow.” She scoops his t-shirt off the floor and puts it on. Stealing his clothes is perhaps not the best way to get him to leave. “You’re lucky I squeezed you in at all.”

“Mm, real lucky to get squeezed by you,” he says, and she makes a gagging noise, but she sits back down. 

“I hope you count your blessings every day.”

“Right before I go to sleep, I kneel next to my bed and say, _Thank the angel Maia Roberts will still fuck me_.”

“Damn straight.” She punches his arm, then lets him use it to pull her into his lap for a kiss. 

He kissed her for the first time a week ago, half-impulsive in the alley behind the Hunter’s Moon. He’s found himself turning up at the bar almost every day since, loitering for her attention; tonight was the first time she brought him home, claiming she was too tired to go at it without a bed beneath her. Apparently brick walls and bathroom stalls have begun to lose their appeal. 

Jace couldn’t agree — he likes the recklessness of it, the scrapes and bruises. But he’s not going to argue with having her all laid out for him.

Before he can roll her back into the sheets, she pushes off him with a breathless little laugh. “Fuck off,” she says. “I have stuff to do. Don’t you have, I don’t know, shadows to hunt or something?”

“I’ve hit my shadow-hunting quota for today, actually.” Jace’s hands slide from her skin, and he sinks against the bedding. “Now I’ve got all this time to spare.” He quirks an eyebrow at her, cheeky.

Maia is unmoved. “Get a hobby.” 

“Shadowhunters don’t have hobbies, we have missions,” he says, almost automatically. He watches her go, again, and this time she plucks a pair of panties out of her dresser, along with fleecy sweatpants and warm socks. Game very much over. “When we don’t have missions, we have research and training and —”

Maia groans and leans over to kiss his mouth shut. “Now you’ve really gotta go, you’re making me sad.”

“You don’t get to be the best if your focus is split,” Jace informs her.

Maia blows a raspberry at him, then pokes him right in the center of his forehead. It startles him so much he almost laughs, until she says, “Sad,” again. Then she gets an inquisitive look on her face. “So you don’t do _anything?_ ”

“I do things,” he objects. “Lots of things. I —”

“Go on missions and research and train,” she supplies. “What about…going to the movies? Reading? Going on a hike? Some watercolors? Does this all sound like Greek to you?”

Jace rolls his eyes. But he doesn’t know what to say, because he doesn’t do any of those things and never has; he might as well have been born with a sword in his hand. “I do things,” he repeats, without elaborating. He sits up on his knees to pull her close again, not caring when the sheet slips away — planning on it. “I do this, don’t I?”

He can feel Maia’s doubtful smile when they kiss, but her arms curl around his neck and she doesn’t make him leave right away.

Later he’s avoiding sleep at one of the computers in the Ops Center, its blue glow making his already tired eyes ache. But his wrists remember the grip of Maia’s fingers, and that makes work a little more bearable. Except.

Except, Jace can’t stop thinking, “Do you think it’s weird that we don’t do anything when we’re off duty?”

Isabelle glances over at him. Her hair is in a businesslike ponytail and she looks perfectly alert despite the hour. “What?”

“You know, like —” He thinks of Maia’s obvious crush on Simon, who does lots of things: makes music and writes, rambles constantly about movies, can even hold his own in a fight. When they met, Jace never would have imagined he’d be envious of Simon Lewis. Not that he’d ever cop to it. “In our spare time. The way…mundanes do.”

Isabelle is amused. “I don’t think Clary cares that you don’t do the things mundanes do.” He tries very carefully not to react to that, but he must fail, because she suddenly lights up with voracious curiosity. “Jace.”

He’s riveted by the surveillance footage on the screen in front of him. Such fascinating trees; he can’t possibly tear his eyes away.

“Jace, who is she? Is she a _mundane?_ How did you even meet a mundane?”

“She’s not a —” he starts, then cuts himself off. “Why does a girl need to be involved for me to think about stuff like this?”

Izzy makes a face. “Because I know you, that’s why.”

Jace thinks of Maia’s lifted eyebrows, her casually judgmental _so you don’t do anything?_ And he huffs, “It’s not about a girl.”

But she does get in his head. 

Next time he has a minute — after he’s finished patrolling and come into his room to do a few rounds with the bag before showering and going to bed — he hesitates. And instead of wrapping his hands and working himself to exhaustion, he lays back on his bed and wonders what he would do, if he could do anything.

He texts Maia, _what are you reading_.

She replies, _you already got me into bed, stop_.

He goes for a run. It’s close enough to a Shadowhunter-approved activity to feel normal, but it’s different to be outside, in the city. To let people see him as he races through the streets without his invisibility rune activated, not chasing anything or being chased. He’s conscious of the churn of his legs, the air in his lungs. He watches people as he passes them by, all these mundanes out living their lives — walking their dogs, grabbing drinks, piling into cabs. Until Clary, he thought people were kind of empty and fragile, needy and helpless. She seemed set apart to him, special. She was a Shadowhunter in sheep’s clothing, so she could be folded into _us_ and leave _them_ behind. He never understood why she was so unwilling to do that, why it was hard for her, what she was losing by giving them up. Now he feels very aware of all the things he never bothered to learn.

He skids to a stop right before a bookstore. There’s a line of carts out front with a sign proclaiming _$1!_ taped to their sides; books are crammed onto the metal shelves. He texts Maia again. _I’m serious_ , he says. _I’ve been told my use of free time is sad_.

The ellipses rise and fall, and he imagines her expression: exasperated, but maybe a little bit fond too. Possibly. He can hope, at least. 

She gives him the title and Jace goes in to buy it.


End file.
